


Bite Back

by deathlybijoumme



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Arson, Attempted Murder, Autistic Herbert West, Child Abuse, Religious Content, Trans Herbert West
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:15:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21904330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathlybijoumme/pseuds/deathlybijoumme
Summary: Herbert West, young and a little too trusting, comes out to his family on his 13th birthday. Things... do not go well.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Bite Back

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains a depiction of severe child abuse based around transphobia and religion. It also contains the (justified) revenge for this action, and references psychiatric abuse. Be advised that this fic might be triggering if you have personal experience with any of these matters.  
> I, the writer, am trans, was abused as child, and am autistic. I am not exploiting anyone here, so put away the call out post.

Herbert vividly remembers the dinner where his family fell completely apart. It was kind of his fault, after all.

Scene of the crime: his family dinner table, his 13th birthday.  
Victim: herself.  
Perpetrator: himself.

It's right before the cake when he commits his first murder. The thing about children is that they trust their parents, you see, often even when they’ve proven that they aren’t worthy of such things.

“I have something to tell you.” Herbert starts, jiggling his leg up and down under the table. Corisande looks at him, as though she already knows. Bernadette, who does know, keeps her eyes firmly on the table. Eglantine, still too young to know what’s going on, fidgets impatiently. 

His mother smiles. “Can it wait until later?” 

The petticoat he’s wearing itches, almost like it’s insisting he gets on with it so they can finally part ways. 

“No. It’s important.”

“More important than your birthday?”

“Yes.” Were he not born the cursed/fairer sex, there would be a click in his throat, he imagines. But then, he wouldn’t have to make this announcement if that was the case. “Mother, Father- everyone, really. I’d like to go by Herbert from now on.”

His mother’s face falls. “Why?” she asks but it sounds less like a question and more like an accusation. 

The murder weapon: his mouth, his brain. 

Herbert continues, knowing he cannot take it back. “I’m not a girl.”

His mother draws closer, looking down. “What are you, then? A man?” Her eyes shine like she knows something he doesn’t. “Well?”

Herbert looks down at the table as her hands settle on him. “Yes.”

She pulls him out of the chair with ease and yanks him onto his feet. Bernadette starts. 

“Mom-!”

“Stay out of this.” His mother shot her a withering look. “I know how to deal with it.” She adjusted her grip on his arm as she pulled him up the stairs. 

“Let go.” Herbert whispered. 

“I won’t hear it, devil.” His mother won’t even look at him. “I’ll get you out of my daughter.”

“This isn’t the devil-”

He’s cut off by a hard slap. He doesn’t bother touching it with his hand- past experience has told him that only makes it feel worse, especially where her ring hit him.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you transfer to that secular school,” she mutters. “Blinded me with all those pretty words about potential and genius, your psychiatrist telling me it might help you act like a normal child... I should’ve seen the warning signs.”

She bangs on the door to her and father’s room. “Lauren! Get up!” He can hear the whine of the TV even out here, with the door closed.

Herbert tries to squirm away from her, but her grip doesn’t loosen. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Bernadette peeking up over the top stair. His mother bangs on the door again. 

“Lauren, we need to do that last resort!” Finally, he can hear his father moving. 

What last resort?

Corisande floats up the stairs and stands next to his mother. “I’ll start the water.”

“Good. Make it cold. It’s supposed to work better that way.” His mother’s fingernails are digging into his arm, and he knows they’ll leave marks.

Corisande floats off to the bathroom. His father opens the door and looks at him. Herbert immediately wishes he hadn’t. There is nothing in his father’s eyes that will help him. His father grabs his arms and steers him to the bathroom. 

Herbert immediately goes limp, knowing he doesn’t want to find out what exactly they’re trying to do to him. What they’ve planned to do to him.

How long have they all known about this? Did they plan this when they started taking him to a psychiatrist? Or was it before that?

His father lets go of his arms and wrenches him up by the waist. 

“Let go!” It is not in Herbert’s nature to yell, especially not at home, but he has to. He knows he has to. “Let go of me! Help!”

His father adjusts his grip as Herbert starts to physically lash out. “Calm down, Winnie. We’re helping, do you understand? We’re helping you.” There’s the smell of alcohol on his breath.

It is uncomfortable, how easily they get him bent over the bathtub. He doesn’t know how pushes his head under the water, he can’t see, he can barely seem to move, and he thinks he’s dying right when he’s yanked back up again. 

“What’s your name?”

He’s too dazed to respond, he can’t even hear that well, and he’s under again. 

This continues for a small eternity until he gets the air to gasp out what they want to hear him say. 

“Winifred! My name is Winifred!”

He hears a sigh of relief and bites back anger. They pull him away from the tub, and his vision is blurry- his glasses got lost in the water. Even so, he can see well enough.

When they let him go, the first thing he does is make a run for it. Corisande’s slender hand catches him around the ankle, and his head bangs against the wall, and for a while there's nothing. 

His parents have decided to pull him out of school completely. They tell the headmaster that it's for health reasons, he guesses. He wouldn't actually know. He isn't allowed out of the house anymore.

Bernadette, the half-decent person that she was, took his presents up to his room, so at least he has that. With the stereoscope she got him, he can pretend he isn’t there. He can pretend that the leaves aren’t changing outside his window.

The leaves start falling when his parents finally speak to him directly again.

“Winnie, sweetheart?”

The sound of his mother’s voice makes him jump.

“Everything's gonna be okay, sweetie.” his mother says. “The doctors are gonna fix you. Mr. Jameson explained it all to us.”

His heart- once beating rapidly- no longer seems to exist. Fix him? Fix him. Fucking fix him. And with Mr. Jameson’s help- another zealot from the church.

“I know you don't ... understand now, but trust us, you'll thank us when you're older.” His father, ever spineless when it comes to matters of pride or importance unless it means he is viewed as abnormal. “We’re terribly sorry for the bathtub incident. We were just frightened.”

He does not reply. He wants to. He wants to rail how could you do this, how could you condemn me to an early grave, how could you expect me to forgive you. But… they don't deserve a reply. 

He crosses silently, to his bed and stares at the ceiling. Pink, with purple flowers painted at the corners. 

Never before has a flower earned his ire.

“Honey?”

Herbert does not even deign to look at the door. He’d been frozen in here- for months. It’s like his brain finally caught up to everything else.

“Winnie?”

He bites back how much he wants to scream that that is not his name. 

His father sighs. “We’ll talk in the morning before we take you to the facility.” The two of them walk away.

The second Herbert is sure they're gone, he checks his door. They left it locked. Locked, but he will not die here. Nor in whatever dungeon they plan to put him in. 

His eyes focus on the old chemistry set they got him for his 13th birthday. Hard to believe that that was so recent. Hard to believe he was already thinking of a plan.

The question was: just how angry was he?

The answer: enough to level a city. But failing that, a house would do. His house would do. 

He gets up out of bed, careful to avoid the creaky floorboard. It's interesting how easily nail polish remover, acid, a tissue, and Potassium permanganate make a fire. It's good for him that he has all of those. 

No one is going to hurt him like this again. That, he promises to himself. It doesn’t matter how badly they cannot understand him. 

He crams the tissues under the door before he lights them. He doesn’t like his chances if he jumps out the window, which he’d have to break first anyway, so the door has to go. He pauses, dropper in hand. He’ll need more fuel. 

He looks at his closet, full of clothes he hates, and focuses on the damned dress he wore on his 13th birthday. A few minutes later, he has it shredded into little pieces and ready to burn. 

It takes longer than he’d like to get the door out of the way. 

He goes to Eglantine and Bernadette’s room. Bernadette, to little surprise, is already awake and has the younger of the two in her arms. The three of them exit the house without a word. 

Bernadette sets Eglantine on the ground and sits. He wonders how long it will take the fire department to get here. He hopes it’s awhile.

Bernadette looks at him, her face backlit by the flames. “Let me disappear.”

Herbert feels everything in him stiffen. She notices.

“Please. I don’t want to play the waiting game anymore, I don’t-” she sighs. “My life is controlled by people who don’t care about me. I want out. I don’t want to wait “just” two more years.”

“I don’t want to be alone.” 

“You won’t be.”

“Yes, I will.” Herbert looks at Eglantine, on the ground and still asleep. “She’ll be adopted fast. I won’t be at all.”

“Good. You’ll be free. Don't you get it?” She draws his eyes back to her. “Without me, there will be fewer questions… Herbert.”

A shiver of glee goes through him at the sound of someone actually calling him that. 

“They might think I…” 

Bernadette laughs. “You're a 13-year-old who has supposedly been sick for almost half a year and looks like it. I don't think they'll even look your way.” She sets her jaw. “If anything, they’re more likely to blame me.”

“You don’t have anything to take with you.” She wasn’t even dressed to leave, she didn’t have shoes on. “You could die.”

She smiles and stands. “You could’ve died when you set that fire.” She walks over to the porch and lifts up a brick, pulling out a small bag. “Besides. I’ve been waiting for something like this for awhile.” She walks back over and shows him. Money. A lot of it.

“Where-?”

“Half from their wallet, half from working odd jobs around the neighborhood.” She looks at him. “Well?”

The quiet lasts a minute. Then two. Then three. 

“I never saw you.”

“Thank you.”

She leaves like a ghost, and Herbert is alone, with a sister he barely knows and everything he has burning. And by god… it's the best thing that ever happened to him.


End file.
